New advisory committee formed with 9-point agenda including overseas job markets expansion

An 11-member advisory council committee has been formed to provide recommendations on nine issues, including the expansion of overseas labour markets.

The Cabinet Division issued a gazette on Sunday, forming the ‘Advisory Council Committee on Overseas Employment of Bangladeshis, as well as cancelling a previous gazette issued in this regard on 8 April 2024.

Adviser to expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry Asif Nazrul was made convener of the 11-member committee.

The other members of the Committee are: finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed, foreign adviser Md Touhid Hossain, home adviser Lt. Gen. (retd) Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, industries adviser Adilur Rahman Khan, education adviser professor Chowdhury Rafiqul Abrar, LGRD and cooperatives ministry adviser Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuyain, labour and employment adviser Brig. Gen. (retd) M Sakhawat Hussain, social welfare adviser Sharmeen Soneya Murshid, civil aviation and tourism adviser Sk Bashir Uddin, and cultural affairs adviser Mostofa Sarwar Farooki.

The previous committee had 13 members.

Seventeen senior secretaries and secretaries, including the cabinet secretary and principal secretary to the chief adviser, will assist the committee.

The committee’s scope of work is to make recommendations on nine specific issues that include coordinating efforts related to overseas employment, providing guidance on expanding and exploring new labour markets, addressing challenges in foreign employment, ensuring the overall welfare of migrant workers, improving the skills of aspiring migrants, and promoting legal remittance channels.

The scope of work is identical to that of 2024; even punctuation marks like periods, commas, and semicolons remain unchanged.

According to data from the Bureau of Manpower, Employment, and Training (BMET), overseas employment dropped by 300,000 in 2024 compared to 2023. This decline is due to labour markets in Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman being closed. Only Saudi Arabia remains open among the major labour destinations.

BMET data shows that around 617,000 workers went abroad during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. The number rose to over 1.1 million in 2022. It increased further to 1.3 million in 2023.

However, the number dropped by 300,000 in 2024, totalling 1 million. Of these, 90 per cent went to just five countries: Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Qatar, Singapore, and the UAE.

According to sources, Malaysia’s labour market closed in June 2024. While over 125,000 workers went to Oman in 2023, only 358 have gone in 2024.

The situation is similar in the UAE—nearly 100,000 workers went in 2023, while only 47,000 went in 2024. In contrast, Saudi Arabia saw an increase from nearly 500,000 workers in 2023 to about 625,000 in 2024.

Although the government claims to have sent workers to 168 countries, in 2024, workers actually went to only 135 countries.

In most of these, the number is symbolic—only one worker went to 14 countries, two workers to another 14, and only eight countries received 10,000 workers each. Saudi Arabia is the only country that received more than 100,000 workers.

Replying to a query on why the committee was named ‘Advisory Council Committee on Overseas Employment of Bangladeshis’ and why the word ‘employment’ was specifically used, a senior cabinet division official said that it would have been more appropriate to use ‘employment opportunities’ instead of ‘employment.’

However, since everything was directly copied from the previous notification, with only the advisors’ names replacing ministers’, this wording remained unchanged, the official added.